what's working

In some ways, shifting my focus is like starting a brand new job but going to the same old office. It’s hard to make new routines in a familiar place. For two decades I trained myself to accomplish certain tasks on certain days in a certain order. (Old habits and old dogs come to mind.)

My family and I talked it out.

“I need specifics,” I said. “What do you need me to be doing?”

“Handle the food,” they said. “The rest we will split up.“

OK. Just food and words. Food and words. I can do that. I can do that. During the day, when I start to get distracted by other jobs, I stop and ask myself if what I am doing is related to feeding my family or to my writing career and if the answer is no, I have to stop doing that thing and get back to work. I’m like a graying kindergartner. ;)

But, some things that are helping me focus on the real job:

1. Listening to and reading about writers and their work. Melissa turned me onto the Commonplace podcasts, which are long, lush conversations between poets and artists about how their lives and work entwine. Every time I come across someone whose work interests me at all, I chase them around the internet for awhile and read whatever I can. (Then I tell myself, we are doing the same work, these people and me. They have bodies and families and houses and demands and they get the work done. You can too.)

2. Starting the day with a little ritual: journaling, exercise, then reading poetry out loud to myself. (Currently working through the latest Poetry Mag, as well as Kyce Bello’s gorgeous new book, Refugia.)

3. I just added another practice to that last week, inspired by Kortney’s Ursula project. Copying one poem a day into a copywork book. Something about reading the work aloud then writing it out by hand fires up the creativity in my brain. I’m ready to get to work!

(On the food front, today I’m making this lasagna for dinner. It’s the kind of thing I can make in stages throughout the day and will provide lunches for tomorrow! Win.)

tonia

P.S. working on the newsletter this week! But it might come out a few days later than usual. I’m sooo close to meeting my goal of finishing the draft of the novel this month! Wish me luck!

small shifts

So often in my life, the biggest changes hinge on the smallest shifts. Just recently, in fact, I was with a friend and happened to see her daily planner. She was showing me some odd bit of something she’d collected and scribbled down for later. Her book, I noted, looked nothing like mine. I stared at her pages. They were perfectly ordinary, no elaborate decorations or cute drawings. No washi tape or fancy clips. But at that moment, a door in my mind swung wide open.

I’m a quasi-bullet journaler. By this I mean, I absorbed the idea of a planning notebook and I write down all my tasks in a neat row and check them off when they are done. At the beginning of the year I make an index in the front and never write anything in it except: “January, p 1.” Sometimes I keep one of those vertical calendars and then get confused by it. Occasionally I use a symbol to mark a task, then forget what the symbol means; later when I notice that task still hasn’t been done, I write it again in a daily task list. My task list includes everything I need to get done in a day: yoga, walk, clean bathrooms, water plants, call X, etc. It works for me.

My friend, as far as I could tell, used a similar method for keeping track of her to-do list: a list, some checkmarks. What caught my attention wasn’t her method, it was her content. She’s a busy woman with multiple jobs and a family. Her day probably has a hundred tasks she could put down and mark off. But her task list didn’t have any of the mundane suspects my own does. She didn’t write down, “feed animals,” like I do - as if I don’t feed the animals every single day of my life, as if somehow, if it doesn’t appear on a list I will just look blankly at the meowing cats and shrug, clueless as to why they keep bothering me. Instead, my friend’s book was a collection of her notes, inspirations, ideas, and specific tasks related to her art.

When I got home, I looked in my notebook and found endless lists of household chores. The same things every day on a rotating carousel. Monday always has “clean kitchen.” Thursday always has “meal plan.” If an archeologist digs up this book someday they will not know I am a writer. They will believe I spent every full day of my life cleaning and cleaning and cleaning some more. (Occasionally, you will find in a task list the all-purpose word “write.” That’s it.)

I’ve thought about this a great deal in the time since I saw my friend’s book, the reasons why such a complex and demanding part of my life rarely shows up in my own notebook. Part of it has to do with fear and claiming ownership of myself. It’s hard to fail at a task like “scrub toilets,” after all. Part of it has to do with a natural period of transition from one career to another, and this, I am still trying to work out.

But I do know this: the next day I didn’t write down anything I usually would. I didn’t note down that it was the day for cleaning bedrooms and doing laundry. I didn’t remind myself to exercise and give basic care to the animals. I wrote a detailed list of what needed to happen next in my novel. And when I came across things I needed to remember for writing articles or ideas for future posts, or notes for my newsletter, I wrote those down there too. Suddenly, my whole approach shifted. In the past, I have struggled to take the time for my writing work the way I should. I would sit down, write frantically for a couple hours, then look at my task list and see a whole list of chores still hanging over me. Now when I look at the page, there is nothing but the vital work calling to me and I am free to attend to it. Amazingly, so far, even without my lists, the house is still standing, the animals are alive and I am still clean and healthy.

Such a small, yet transformative shift.

I’d love to hear about the ways you nurture your own vocations.

peace keep you.

tonia

Martinmas

I love that Martinmas and Veterans Day coexist on the same day (at least in the U.S.) Even as we remember the sacrifices women and men have made for their country, we’re reminded by St. Martin, the Roman soldier who became a Christian and then refused to kill, that there is a third way we can choose. (And this reminds me as well that although religion has been used to justify enormous amounts of persecution, war, and violence through history -and is still doing so now, God help us - it can also be a catalyst for conversion and peace. Anyone else need that reminder?)

When my children were at home, we always made Martinmas lanterns and hung them from the chandelier for a candlelit supper. Many other children and families take their lanterns on a walk through the night. I think it’s a lovely image to represent Martin’s witness to peace shining through the darkness of war and oppression.

On this day, I also like to spend time with other pacifists. Since I don’t really know anyone in my everyday life, it means revisiting the writings of William Stafford, Walter Wink, Thic Nhat Hahn, Leo Tolstoy, Vera Brittain, Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others. I think most of us who come to pacifism and nonviolence arrive there after a struggle between what we know to be true internally and what the rest of the world is determined to make us believe. Having a day to remember those who have stood courageously against the tide of public belief is a lovely gift.

So Happy Martinmas, my friends! May we be reminded of what is possible and courageous enough to believe in peace.

***

This would be a great time to revisit Desmond Doss’ powerful story. And here’s a poem from William Stafford, who spent WW2 in a Conscientious Objector’s Camp:

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum

Feet began to come - a part

of the music. Here came a horse,

clippety clop, away.

My mother said, “Don’t run -

the army is after someone

other than us. If you stay

you’ll learn our enemy.”

Then he came, the speaker. He stood

in the square. He told us who

to hate. I watched my mother’s face,

its quiet. “That’s him,” she said.

just keep moving...

Happy November!

I snapped this photo on my way out the door for my morning walk yesterday. It fascinates me a little that I seem to always take pictures of myself for the internet outdoors, just out of bed and sans make-up. (It’s a long road from the 80’s teenager who wore a staggering amount of pearlized cosmetics and Aquanet and never let her appearance-guard down for a moment, even in the privacy of her own bedroom.)

I think I snap these photos because they represent moments when I feel happiest - on my way out of doors to move my body. That makes it sound like I’m one of those bouncy, energetic people who loves to be outdoors, but it’s not true. I’m actually a low-energy, low-stamina person who likes to be very, very comfortable all the time, pretty much what you’d expect from a writer. :) But somewhere along the line I decided that wasn’t going to serve me well and I needed to move. So I do, nearly every day. I keep it up because now that I’m in my late-forties (ouch) I find that not moving daily = stiffness, sore joints, back injuries, bad moods, mental fog, and weight gain. No thanks!

So many times I talk to people my age and older who think eating right and exercise are not worth the effort, or it’s too late for them to make any changes, but “too late” doesn’t happen until you’re dead! and feeling good is worth every bit of the self-discipline, even when it happens slowly (as it does for me.) Recently, I made an inspiration board for my husband and I and put it on the fridge to keep us motivated, pictures of older adults who are/were going strong with diet and exercise past the time others thought they should slow down. (Like Tao Porchon Lynch, Dr. Ellsworth Wareham, Rich Roll, Joan McDonald , and the fabulous Twyla Tharp among others!)

There’s always a transition period for me with the colder weather, and I’ll have a few days where I don’t want to leave the warm house, but if I just keep putting on my shoes and going out, eventually I start to look forward to those crisp mornings. It’s a better energy booster than caffeine to get me going for the day and I need that for all the hours I spend sitting in front of a screen.

November goals:

Move.

Eat more veggies.

Move some more.

(Oh, and finish the first draft of this novel! So close!)

peace keep you, friends,

tonia